September 12, 2008

things i miss about grand rapids.

1) being around people who have known me for years.
2) pita house.
3) proximity to lake michigan.
4) g-rad, nest, the daac, the uica, and the whole community of people that surrounds all that.
5) terrain that is mostly flat and therefore easily bikeable. (biking in a mountain town requires more physical capability than i can even dream of.)
6) riverside park.
7) cheap rent and no tourists.
8) coffee shops where you can smoke inside. (oh, morningstar! common ground! kava house! damn non-smoking laws in asheville!)
9) the farmer's market.
10) gaia cookies.

things i don't miss:

1) too much snow for too long.
2) the price of cigarettes. (mine were $7.50 there, here they're $4.20.)
3) not much of a radical community to speak of. (asheville is kind of a punk/anarchist hotbed.)

so, the thing i'm getting at is that even though i love it down here, i've been getting homesick for grand rapids lately. i can't afford to come visit, because it's expensive to live here and hard to find jobs, so i'm barely scraping together rent each month. hopefully i'll be back for christmas, but who knows?